page_title: University of Mississippi
section_title: Founding, expansion, and tradition
hierarchical_section_title: University of Mississippi / History / Founding, expansion, and tradition
caption_attribution_description: English: The Dead House, University of Mississippi.
context_page_description: The University of Mississippi is a public research university in Oxford, Mississippi. Including the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, it is the state's largest university by enrollment and promotes itself as the state’s flagship university. The university was chartered by the Mississippi Legislature on February 24, 1844, and four years later admitted its first enrollment of 80 students. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, Ole Miss spent $137 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 142nd in the nation.
  Across all its campuses, the university comprises some 23,258 students. In addition to the main campus in Oxford and the medical school in Jackson, the university also has campuses in Tupelo, Booneville, Grenada, and Southaven, as well as an accredited online high school. About 55 percent of its undergraduates and 60 percent overall come from Mississippi, and 23 percent are minorities; international students respectively represent 90 different nations.
context_section_description: The Mississippi Legislature chartered the University of Mississippi on February 24, 1844. The university opened its doors to its first class of 80 students four years later in 1848. For 23 years, the university was Mississippi's only public institution of higher learning, and for 110 years it was the state's only comprehensive university. Politician Pryor Lea was a founding trustee.
  When the university opened, the campus consisted of six buildings: two dormitories, two faculty houses, a steward's hall, and the Lyceum at the center. Constructed from 1846 to 1848, the Lyceum is the oldest building on campus. Originally, the Lyceum housed all of the classrooms and faculty offices of the university. The building's north and south wings were added in 1903, and the Class of 1927 donated the clock above the eastern portico. The Lyceum is now the home of the university's administration offices. The columned facade of the Lyceum is represented on the official crest of the university, along with the date of establishment.
  In 1854, the university established the fourth state-supported, public law school in the United States, and also began offering engineering education.
  With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, classes were interrupted and almost the entire student body (135 out of 139 students) enlisted in Company A of the 11th Mississippi regiment of the Confederate army. This company, nicknamed the University Greys, suffered a 100% casualty rate in Pickett's Charge.
  The Lyceum was used as a hospital during the Civil War for both Union and Confederate soldiers, especially those who were wounded at the battle of Shiloh. Two hundred-fifty soldiers who died in the campus hospital were buried in a cemetery on the grounds of the university.
  During the post-war period, the university was led by former Confederate general A.P. Stewart, a Rogersville, Tennessee native. He served as Chancellor from 1874 to 1886.
  The university became coeducational in 1882 and was the first such institution in the Southeast to hire a female faculty member, Sarah McGehee Isom, doing so in 1885.
  The student yearbook was published for the first time in 1897. A contest was held to solicit suggestions for a yearbook title from the student body.  Elma Meek, a student, submitted the winning entry of "Ole Miss." Meek's source for the term is unknown; some historians theorize she made a diminutive of "old Mississippi" or derived the term from "ol' missus," an African-American term for a plantation's "old mistress. This sobriquet was not only chosen for the yearbook, but also became the name by which the university was informally known. "Ole Miss" is defined as the school's intangible spirit, which is separate from the tangible aspects of the university.
  The university began medical education in 1903, when the University of Mississippi School of Medicine was established on the Oxford campus. In that era, the university provided two-year pre-clinical education certificates, and graduates went out of state to complete doctor of medicine degrees. In 1950, the Mississippi Legislature voted to create a four-year medical school. On July 1, 1955, the University Medical Center opened in the capital of Jackson, Mississippi, as a four-year medical school. The University of Mississippi Medical Center, as it is now called, is the health sciences campus of the University of Mississippi. It houses the University of Mississippi School of Medicine along with five other health science schools: nursing, dentistry, health-related professions, graduate studies and pharmacy (The School of Pharmacy is split between the Oxford and University of Mississippi Medical Center campuses).
  Several attempts were made via the executive and legislative branches of the Mississippi state government to relocate or otherwise close the University of Mississippi. The Mississippi Legislature between 1900 and 1930 introduced several bills aiming to accomplish this, but no legislation was ever passed by either house. One such bill was introduced in 1912 by Senator William Ellis of Carthage, Mississippi, w
caption: The "Dead House" was built before the Civil War and was used as a morgue during the war. Bodies were carried from the Dead House across campus to the Civil War Cemetery, which contains more than 430 graves. The building was demolished in 1958, and Farley Hall--which contains the School of Journalism and New Media--was erected in its place.[25]
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